Our new home - before and after

Last week essentially everything in the house, except some blinds we have been waiting for for over four months, was finally finished. Although our camera died, a friend was willing to offer theirs so we could get current pictures of our new home. But as we emptied the last of the boxes we found our old digital camera and were able to use it to get the "after" pictures to compare to the "before" pictures we took two years ago. Our new camera is in Illinois on its way via the "expatriate back door route" and will be here after Thanksgiving ready for our trip to Thailand. After having things in boxes for almost two years, it has been a little like Christmas and it feels good to have all the boxes gone. Here are our before and after pictures. Besides the painting, we had all the doors and cabinets stripped and restained, new granite counters installed in the kitchen and bathrooms (as well as some beautiful copper sinks), and full walls of floor-to-ceiling shelves built in the den and the music room. When Walt's sister Marg and her husband Dan were here, they said that pictures don't really do the house justice. So when are you coming to visit?

Little update

A quick update on the last few weeks. Some people have noticed that we have not blogged for a while, and then Nancy's monkey question. We are still alive and totally enjoying life in Mexico. Here's a status update.

My sister, Margaret, and her husband, Dan, who live in Canada, visited us for a couple of weeks at the end of October. It was an absolutely wonderful time that we were able to spend with them. One unfortunate, or fortunate depending on your point of view, happened at the time they were here. The granite guy came and ripped out the granite, including kitchen sink, the day before they came and we didn't get our kitchen sink back the day after they left. So we had to eat out everyday - fortunate or unfortunate? We would have almost convinced them to move down except for their five kids and eleven grandkids in Canada.... guess we lost that one. We visited Tlaquepaque, an artisans section in Guadalajara. Here are a couple of pics.

We are also progressing well in our Spanish class. We just began Level 3 of the four level course. We will finish Level 3 before we leave for Thailand at Christmas and finish Level 4 in February. There are two other people in our class and then there was another level with four people in it. Our Mexican friends are amazed at how quickly we are learning Spanish and the fact that we speak with hardly an accent (that is assuming we remember the right vocabulary!). That is one of the things the language school stresses - phonetics and pronunciation. In fact the phonetics classes are taught by Mexicans, so I guess we will sound Guadalajaran. The other excellent thing about the school is that it was designed by missionaries for missionaries, so we are getting a lot of vocabulary that is not given in standard language schools. Here we are in class. There are many reasons we are taking Spanish, the primary being that we chose to live in Mexico and therefore it is incumbent on us to learn the language of our chosen country*. In our development you can get by without Spanish. As long as you only hire people who speak English, and never have to deal with the telephone or electric company! Down in the village, about 70% of the time you need Spanish. The villagers are generally pretty gracious about interpreting "granglish", the mangled gringo versions of Spanish. In Guadalajara, believe it or not, it is 100% Spanish, with not a whole lot of patience for those who don't speak it. We can understand the problem of not being able to learn a new language, but don't understand not bothering.....(*Coming from Cupertino, we have 32 years of experience with the flip-side of this issue)

Also in the last month we began our Bible exploration study. We know that this is one reason God brought us down here, to use the knowledge He has given us over the years to share with others. We are having a lot of fun and learning a lot ourselves. The folks in the class have very limited knowledge of what is in the Bible. So we are beginning with some very basic stuff and what we are learning is a lot of the things we take for granted as "common" knowledge. We are getting many challenging and thought provoking questions. So it is very exciting for all of us.

The house is "almost" done. (We hear that is a permanent condition) The only thing left are some roman shades that were promised to be installed at the end of July. (Turns out the order was never actually placed, but it is settled now, and we are hoping to have them next week) The cabinets and new granite were finished last week and they look gorgeous. We would have some pictures but our camera died a couple of weeks ago. It is in a camera shop in Guadalajara being checked out. And yes, "Habla inglés?" ' "¡No!". Like we said, Guadalajara is total Spanish. If they fix it we will take pictures and show the "before and after". If not, we will use the expatriot's approach to getting something down here - ship the item to someone in the US who is coming down here and have them bring it across the border. Until we get our camera back, you'll just need to imagine how the house looks. We are extremely pleased with all the work that was done.